Inclusive Mainstream Fund 2026/27: What does it mean for your primary school?
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF) gives mainstream schools in England new funding to strengthen inclusive practice and remove barriers to learning and participation.
How much Inclusive Mainstream Funding will your school receive?
For 2026/27, the base funding rates include:
- £3,000 per school
- £16 per primary pupil
- £79 for each pupil with low prior attainment
- an additional area cost adjustment.
This means the amount each school receives will vary. For example, before the area cost adjustment:
This is an illustration only. Your school can check its actual allocation in the Department for Education (DfE)’s Inclusive Mainstream Fund allocations.
It’s also important to recognise that you don’t have to spend your IMF all immediately. Schools can carry some or all of their 2026/27 allocation forward, provided it is used by 31st March 2028 and continues to meet the conditions of grant.
What can the Inclusive Mainstream Fund be used for?
The DfE has made it clear that the IMF isn’t simply additional SEND funding but that it is intended to be used alongside existing school funding to strengthen your school’s inclusive core offer. Schools are expected to look at the needs of their whole cohort, identify commonly occurring and predictable barriers, and invest in approaches that can make a difference.
The DfE has identified seven principles:
- Ambitious leadership and governance
- Evidence-based support and early intervention
- High-quality adaptive teaching and curriculum designed for all learners
- Accessible and enriching provision beyond the classroom
- Safe, respectful culture, belonging and attendance
- Strong family and wider-service partnerships
- Inclusive environments and accessibility
Schools don’t need to spend their funding across all seven. Instead, the focus should be on the areas that address your school’s own identified barriers.
For a digital learning resource like ours, Principle 3: high-quality adaptive teaching and curriculum designed for all learners is particularly relevant. Home Access could also support Principle 6: strong partnerships with families and wider services, where this addresses an identified need within your school.
Where to start with your Inclusive Mainstream Fund planning?
The most useful question to ask here is:
“What barriers are our pupils experiencing, and what could help us remove them?”
Depending on your school, you may have:
- Pupils who need more opportunities to practise
- Pupils needing more interactive or visual learning to help them engage
- Pupils who need to work at a different level or pace, or benefit from additional support to develop independence.
These needs can occur across the school without necessarily being linked to formal SEND diagnoses.
That’s why flexible resources can be an important part of an inclusive classroom.
Can the Inclusive Mainstream Fund be used for Busy Things?
Potentially, yes. It depends on the barriers your school has identified and whether Busy Things represents an evidence-informed approach to addressing them.
Busy Things provides 1,600+ curriculum-linked activities, games and tools across Early Years, KS1 and KS2.
Teachers can use it for:
- whole-class teaching
- small-group work
- independent learning
- additional practice
- different levels of challenge
- targeted support
- homework.
The flexibility it offers can help teachers adapt learning without necessarily creating a completely separate learning experience for individual pupils.
Busy Things also includes accessibility features, including compatibility with eye gaze and switch controls, helping more pupils access digital learning.
It’s great for giving teachers more options for adapting how pupils access the curriculum.
Already using Busy Things?
If your school already subscribes to Busy Things, the DfE says IMF funding shouldn’t simply subsidise something you were already paying for.
Instead, you could consider whether the funding could support an expansion of your existing provision, such as:
- extending access to additional year groups
- providing access to more pupils
- adding Home Access.
The key is to connect the additional investment to an identified barrier and intended outcome.
What about your Inclusion Strategy?
Every school receiving IMF funding needs to publish an Inclusion Strategy by 31st December 2026. The DfE recommends a process of:
Identify barriers → Examine the evidence → Develop your strategy → Implement and monitor → Evaluate
Evidence might include assessment, attainment, attendance, behaviour, classroom observations, pupil voice, family feedback and professional input.
Importantly, schools aren’t expected to look only at pupils with an existing SEND diagnosis. The focus is on identifying barriers across the whole cohort.
Read the DfE guidance on developing an Inclusion Strategy.
How could Busy Things feature in your strategy?
If your school’s evidence identifies a need for more flexible and accessible curriculum resources, you could structure your thinking like this:
Barrier: School observations, pupil voice and teacher feedback indicate that some pupils find it difficult to sustain attention and engagement during certain learning activities, particularly during extended independent work or where there are limited opportunities for interaction and immediate feedback. This can affect participation, persistence, and opportunities to practise and consolidate learning.
Planned activity: Use Busy Things to strengthen the school’s inclusive digital learning offer through whole-class teaching, small-group work, independent learning and additional practice.
Why?: Pupils benefit from variety and flexibility in how curriculum content is presented, practised and consolidated. Creating differentiated resources from scratch can be time-intensive and challenging to pitch appropriately for pupils working at different levels. Teachers therefore need access to resources that can be adapted and differentiated efficiently. Busy Things provides interactive, curriculum-linked activities that support differentiation, additional practice and reinforcement while keeping pupils connected to the same curriculum entitlement as their peers.
Intended outcome: Increased pupil engagement, participation and independence through access to more varied, interactive and appropriately pitched learning activities. Teachers will also have greater capacity to provide differentiation and additional practice, enabling more pupils to access and engage successfully with the curriculum.
Make your Inclusive Mainstream Fund funding work for your school
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund is a good opportunity to look at what’s happening across your school and invest where you think it can make the biggest difference.
For some schools, that could mean staff training or targeted interventions. For others, it could mean improving accessibility or giving teachers more flexible resources for adaptive teaching.
If your school’s evidence points towards a need for more accessible, adaptable and engaging ways for pupils to access the curriculum, Busy Things could be well worth considering. We’d recommend you take a free 28-day trial to see its engaging, adaptive resources for yourself. If you’d prefer a guided tour through the platform, that is available too.
There are 1,600+ curriculum-linked activities to explore, covering Early Years through to Year 6, with lots of activity types and settings available.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can the Inclusive Mainstream Fund be used for digital resources?
Schools can use the funding on to help overcome any commonly occurring and predictable barriers to learning. They can invest in any approach, digital or physical, that can make a difference.
2. Can schools use the Inclusive Mainstream Fund to expand an existing resource?
Yes, the IMF funding should not replace existing spending but, if you already subscribe to Busy Things for example, it would be perfectly fine to use some of the fund to extend your access or add Home Access, so long as that solved a barrier to learning you were experiencing.
3. When does my school need to publish its Inclusion Strategy?
All schools receiving IMF funding need to publish an Inclusion Strategy by 31st December 2026.